POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE<\/strong>: I haven\u2019t written anything about the recent gay-marriage decisions. I really didn\u2019t think I had anything to say that I hadn\u2019t said already. But apparently I do\u2026 because I have too many friends?<\/p>\n This post was prompted by an ad from the National Organization for Marriage, which a friend of mine described as \u201cOrwellian\u201d; in his view, the ad said that love is hate. So here are three thoughts about the ad [EDITED: It\u2019s that \u201cGathering Storm\u201d one\u2013I\u2019m too lazy to find a link, but I\u2019m sure YouTube can hook you up] and that adjective, in order from least interesting to me to most interesting to me, because a) the last shall be first, yo; and b) I acknowledge that your priorities may not be the same as mine. So this post is about the implicit concessions of the slippery slope; religious liberty; and how our language acknowledges the divergent forms of eros<\/em>.<\/p>\n Full disclosure: I do weekly html monkeywork for NOM. I have exactly no input into their ads, but, you know, if I really disagreed with what they do on a fundamental level, I\u2019d quit. My bosses don\u2019t know I\u2019m writing this post, since they don\u2019t read my blog and I don\u2019t plan to bring this to their attention.<\/p>\n That said, the ad. It\u2019s really, really <\/em>cheesy.<\/p>\n It\u2019s fearmongering<\/strong>, and I feel really conflicted about that. I don\u2019t want to become so missish on this issue, so much in thrall to political prudery, that I reject the gutter-punching, tabloid ethos I profess to love.<\/p>\n And yet at the same time, I wonder whether this ad goes against John Paul II\u2019s Gospel admonition to \u201cBe not afraid!\u201d We\u2019re told to \u201cduc in altum,\u201d to put out into the deep. Maggie Gallagher, a.k.a. my part-time boss, told me once that the slippery-slope argument is already a concession. The implicit premise is, \u201cWell, gay marriage isn\u2019t really that bad, but look at what it might cause!<\/em>\u201d I think the religious-liberty ad partakes in the same concession. It\u2019s the kind of ad you\u2019d expect from a lost cause. We\u2019ve lost, but please, can\u2019t we have our small enclave of resistance?<\/p>\n And yet, and yet. There\u2019s probably a reason I don\u2019t get to do these ads, you know? Am I just using effective ads as my redshirts<\/a>? Am I using them as the demotic worldview from which I, as a Respectable Person, must distance myself? Am I giving in to the pressure to rule all <\/em>arguments against gay marriage out of bounds as bigoted? (A move made quite strikingly here<\/a>, for example, where \u201cI don\u2019t want my children to be taught things deeply contrary to my faith\u201d becomes \u201cGay people molest children!\u201d If the ad described in that comment is out of bounds, what argument could possibly be permissible?)<\/p>\n John Corvino describes a similar dilemma from the opposite side, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s not like the ad is wrong<\/strong>. I guess I just can\u2019t understand how people mock or disagree with the basic premise, or call it paranoid or hysterical. It\u2019s obvious to me that the whole culture changes when gay marriage happens. That\u2019s what gay marriage is for.<\/em> <\/p>\n I don\u2019t think you can say, \u201cYou are just like the bigots who oppose interracial marriage\u2013but nothing will happen to you as a consequence!\u201d<\/p>\n If you\u2019re at all interested in the religious-liberty implications of gay marriage, I\u2019d recommend Marc Stern\u2019s and Chai Feldblum\u2019s chapters from Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty<\/em>. For a shorter overview, you could try Maggie Gallagher\u2019s \u201cBanned in Boston\u201d <\/a>article, which in my obviously-not-neutral opinion is very fair.<\/p>\n The best counterargument is the same as the best counterargument on all <\/em>gay-marriage topics: \u201cThis isn\u2019t just about gay marriage but about a whole panoply of prior changes, most of which have obvious good qualities as well, so you\u2019re not seeking status quo so much as rollback.\u201d Dale Carpenter makes that argument ably and concisely here<\/a>.<\/p>\n I see the force of that argument, and of course I acknowledge that there\u2019s no way we would be having this conversation without the prior cultural changes which led to e.g. laws against discrimination based on sexual orientation. For that matter, every single day I take advantage of the cultural changes which have made it possible for me to be an out lesbian while facing very limited explicit hostility.<\/p>\n But I still disagree that gay marriage is only a trivial turn of the ratchet (do ratchets turn?? I\u2019m really not the home-improvement kind of dykey!), a mere formality, or something you can only worry about if you also reject all of the prior cultural moves which brought us here. I think prudence can allow you to draw a line, and frankly, gay marriage is a really obvious place for that line. Gay marriage is a big deal for the same reasons given by its supporters!\u2013it is a real change in the culture, a deeply significant change, and a change with far-reaching public implications. I don\u2019t think you can write paeans to marriage as a public and cultural status, then turn around and say that gay marriage will have very limited public effects. Marriage isn\u2019t designed to have limited public effects.<\/p>\n